Bosnia's pain spurs relief effort

Posted: Saturday, March 21, 2009

By Merritt Melancon

Athens podiatrist Frank DiPalma knew he wanted to have some sort of spiritual awakening when he made the trip to Medjugorje - a small town in Western Bosnia where people have had visions of the Virgin Mary.

DiPalma found the experience he was looking for - but not where he thought he would.

The pilgrimage DiPalma took with his wife earlier this month left him shocked at how rough life remains for people in rural parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the region in Southeastern Europe ravaged by more than three years of warfare a decade ago.

Treating patients in a rural clinic for less than a week convinced DiPalma to make an annual trip to the Balkans region to offer his medical services. Now, he's trying to convince colleagues to join him.

"It was torn apart during the war," DiPalma said. "The war was over in 1995, but they just blew everything up there. There's still not much that's not been rebuilt, a decade later."

The infrastructure in the country's rural areas remains in shambles from the Bosnian War, which raged from March 1992 to November 1995. Part of the fallout: the 2.1 million people who live outside big cities don't have access to comprehensive health care and don't have much of a chance of finding a job, DiPalma said.

Many families still haven't returned to the homes or towns they fled when the fighting broke out, and some were living in refugee camps as late as 2008, according to Rebuild for Bosnia, a British nonprofit dedicated to helping displaced people in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

DiPalma met a lot of people who still are living with pain and lameness from war wounds and wartime injuries.

He hadn't planned to practice podiatry while on vacation, but a local priest talked him into volunteering at a rehabilitation center for addicts. While the town had a basic medical clinic, the people there had no access to specialists like orthopedists or podiatrists - the kinds of doctors they need to treat the lingering injuries many people suffered during the war.

"This guy had an orthopedic screw sticking out of his leg," DiPalma added, holding up a photo of a young man.

DiPalma didn't have the access to the tools and medication he's used to having at his disposal in Athens, so there were some people he could do little to help.

"I was making shoe lifts out of gauze and tape, where we usually use rubber," he said. "They didn't even have basics like Ace bandages."

DiPalma learned to use duct tape like he would use an Ace bandage, knowing that none of his shoe lifts or tape bandages would be lasting solutions.

That's when he decided he had to come back with supplies and other medical specialists in tow. He's hoping that his experience can help convince other doctors with specialized skills to make the pilgrimage with him.

DiPalma plans to return to Bosnia next year and he's already started recruiting colleagues, trying to talk the doctors he sees most often into joining him on the 2010 trip.